Apparently there are a variety of options between frenching and matrimony. While this is exciting news, it has led to some debate over what activities occur on which base. Where were you taught the baselines lie?

I was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness. As a kid, I took it really seriously, and really got into the bible, and into God. In high school, however, I developed critical thinking skills, and realized that this whole religion thing was crap. It is a source of constant consternation that I had no dramatic moment of realization, no bold proclamation of renouncement. At the start of my sophomore year of high school, I was a Christian. At the finish, I was not. Somewhere in the middle, I had crossed channels.

It was during this time frame that I read The Illuminatus! Trilogy and The Principia Discordia. Illuminatus! was like an overblown version of Foucault’s Pendulum, with more jokes, prominently featuring an absurdist religion known as Discordiansim. The Principia Discordia is the bible of this religion. At the time, it amused me to convert.

What is a Discordian? Discordians are pranksters, geeks, windmill-tilters, philosophers, punslingers, malcontents, libertarians, communists, poets, physicians, farmers, scientist, magicians, and Monty Python fans. Discordianism promotes acts of chaos as a way of encouraging acts of creation over acts of destruction. Discordianism presents Daoism through the filter of Greek mythology parodying Christianity.

So for a chunk of years I was a card carrying, right honest POPE of the Paratheoanametamystichood of Eris Esoteric. And I dug it. Discordianism’s core of irreverence resonated well within me. The problem was, while I believed in the goddess Eris, I also believed that God was a lie. When someone asked me what my religion was, If I told them I was a Discordian, I got caught up in complicated explanations of what Discordiansim was, that typically ended up undermining my contempt for organized religion and the concept of a god. So, gradually my stated religion stopped being Discordian and started being Atheist.

Well after a few years of that, I’m back to being a Discordian because being an Atheist totally sucks. Totally. It is entirely too grownupish, and it is reactive, not proactive. Discordianism is a much more active, much more fun ethos. Atheists get to bitterly defend ration and sense against a world filled with people who have membership a crazy irrational cult. Not much fun. Discordians try to come up with ways to outcrazy that cult. Much more fun. If you can’t beat ’em, make ’em look foolish.

Yeah, Discordianism is a joke religion. But it is a good joke. It’s funny ’cause it’s true. And yeah, religion is bullshit, but so are all fun things. The belief in made-up sky people only becomes a real problem when the believers get organized, and Discordianism is obviously anything but organized.

Tomorrow is Free Comic Book Day. My fine local shop, Kenmore Komics and Games, offers a choice: Choose two free books, or donate ten bucks to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBLDF) and get one of each. Predictably, I opt for the stack.

I feel the best way to read comics is with a pile of 22 page floppies. I love me some “mad, beautiful ideas,” and as I tear through the pile at a rate of one comic every 8 minutes, the wild and weird half baked concept and crazed conceits stack upon my mind, and they intermingle and cross pollinate, and while it would be stupid to use the word “exhilarating” to describe sitting in one’s room reading funnybooks, fuck it, it is pretty damn exhilarating.

So go to your comic shop tomorrow, and if they give you the option, get the stack.

Sparkle Market, the small supermarket down the street from my house, is in the process of going out of business, as was inevitable. It is very sad.

This past weekend, the entire store’s inventory (excluding alcohol and tobacco products) was reduced 50%. By the time we hit the store on Sunday, it had largely been picked clean. There aren’t many items that won’t sell when halved in cost. One shelf was entirely bare, save for several bottles of Clamato.